I also broke my wire trying to use tweezers. I should have known better. I use (normally do) a spudger on one side and my fingernail on the other to gently pry these types of connectors out. I ended up buying a replacement faceplate on ebay.

This was the hardest part for me. I tried using my fingernails, two different tweezers, and needle nose pliers, but I ended up cutting both the wires. Anyway, I put some electric tape over the exposed wires and just reassembled the system. Funny thing is that the LED still works and I have not noticed any difference. I'm not sure what those wires did, but they seem to not be important.

I also broke off the flimsy wires at the connector. To NOT break the wires, alternate pressing on the right and left sides of the connector with a small flathead screwdriver. Be patient, it will eventually work itself free. There isn't enough to grab onto with the tweezers and you'll only succeed in having them slip off, grab the wires, and yank the wires out.

Good news is that if you do rip out the wires, no worries... I didn't reconnect them and the unit works just fine. I have no idea what those wires are even for. Power LED continues to work no problem.

This guide is really marvellous - works a treat. But I would definitely recommend needle nose pliers for this step rather than tweezers. It's really easy if you use pliers and potentially damaging if not, and you get it wrong. I had one sniff at it with tweezers then immediate nipped out to the garage for my pliers!

Definitely a tricky step with that connector. I also cut broke the wire accidentally and was going to just give up trying to fix the Wii. However, as others stated the Wii works just fine, including the lights. I do wonder what those wire are for.

You can save yourself some trouble at this point and skip the rest of the disassembly: See that green tab to the left of the sd card slot? THAT’S the wifi board (and that green tab, in hindsight, seems designed to make it accessible without taking apart the whole device, don’t you think?) A little careful spudging, and you’ve got it out, ready to replace! (There’s a guy who shows the process on youtube, if you want to review first)

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had a little trouble with theses screws. they were just barely too deep for my 54pies bit driver kit to reach. I ended up inserting a small wad of paper into the shaft of my driver so the tri-wing bit stuck out far enough to engage the screw. (I used the tweezers to remove the paper when I was done) :)

The screw is a PH0000 (quadruple zero) requiring an exceptionally small Phillips screwdriver to remove. If this is your first time in here in a while, this may also be a great time to change the CR2032 battery.

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Note - this screw is a machine screw (e.g. not self-tapping). It screws into a hex nut, and that nut is captive in a slot in the case. When reassembling, ensure that this hex nut is still captive, and has not migrated out to other areas within the Wii.

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The two left hand screws were very difficult to relocate during reassembly. I was coaching my 8 year old through this, and this was probably the only step that he couldn't do. We dropped these screws several times, and used magnets to retrieve. Miniature needle-nose pliers gripping the 'washer' surface of the screw were too wide. We managed to purchase the 'button head' of these screws with the needle-nose and drop the screws into their hole, and push with the phillips until secure. I would like to hear how others install these screws, please.

I had the same problem as you and eventually found an easy way round it. I wrote this to be added to the instructions but it was rejected: "Once the DVD drive has been removed, remove the 4 rubber washers from the screws removed earlier and insert them into your new DVD drive. Because two of the screws are difficult to reach, it is best to insert these two screws into the washers and then slide them into place ready for securing to the base plate".

The rubber washer holds the two screws roughly in position, you can then reach them with your screwdriver through the two holes (about an inch away) and finish tightening them up.

During reassembly, it can be tricky to position the recessed screws. To temporarily magnetize your screwdriver, rub the tip against a magnet for 5-10 seconds. (A refrigerator magnet will do.) You should then be able to put the screw on the tip and gently lower it into position.

Another method for getting the front screws back in is to insert a small pair of tweezers through the DVD slot to guide the screw in. I just dropped the screw in between the tweezers which held the screw just above the hole. Then I was able to use the phillips screwdriver to guide the screw into the hole and screw it in. Done in just a few seconds.

Another option would be to stick a dab of hot glue on the screw to your screwdriver and then when the screw has been driven home either the glue stays on the driver and is easily removed or it stays on the screw and you just pull it off with tweezers or needle nose pliers.

If you are disassembling your Wii because, say, a two-year-old has shovelled pennies into it (yes, that was me) you will also need to partially disassemble the drive itself, which is not covered in this guide. Luckily it's really easy. Unscrew the 4-5 larger Philips/cross head screws on the top of the frame (NOT any of the smaller darker ones) around the edges, and the frame on top of the drive will lift right off. Be careful as there is cabling running to it, so don't yank it or pull it too far off. You will now be able to get any coins or other foreign objects out.

I didn't have a magnetic screwdriver, so I applied a tiny amount of fabric glue to the head of each screw, waited a minute for it to start to harden, inserted my non-mag screwdriver into the screw head, and the screw stuck to the screwdriver long enough to insert it into the hole.

When reversing these steps to reassemble the Wii, at this point it is possible to do a quick test before screwing the drive to the case. This will save you a lot of time if something is wrong.

Don't touch anything you don't have to while the case is off.

Carefully plug the power cable into the back of the Wii, then use a screwdriver to gently press the white button next to the glowing yellow LED on the front. You should hear the DVD drive power up and whir. Then press the white button again, wait for the yellow light to come back, and unplug the Wii.

If you didn't hear the drive start up, most likely one of the two ribbons isn't connected to the drive correctly. Doublecheck the previous 3 steps.

When reversing this step, make sure the ribbon is all the way in. For some reason I found positioning it with my replacement drive was much harder than with my old drive. The gentlest tug after lowering the brown clip would show that the ribbon was not actually being held tightly. I thought for a while that the clip itself was broken, but eventually I got it to hold the ribbon correctly.

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My Wii stopped reading disks and there was a bad clicking noise when trying to read disks. I swapped it out with a new one by following this guide and it works perfectly now! I could not be more pleased. Great guide!

Worked great. Replacing the DVD drive fixed my son's WII. In fact, just a week shy of his 15th birthday, he was able to replace the drive himself. First time he's tackled any repair like this. I just made sure he took his time and labeled and used the mag proj mat to keep track of the pieces.

Great step by step. Had to recover the old Wii after having licensed several songs on Rock Band 3, only to find that Nintendo only licenses to the console. Followed all steps, without hiccup, and and pleased to be playing tunes that I'd paid for and thought was just money thrown away. Not to mention I didn't want to send the thing in to Nintendo for $80..

Great guide. Now I can play my great library of Wii games again. My one trouble spot was step 6, which took me about 40 minutes to end up doing wrong. My Wii now works great again. The only thing is that when I put a Gamecube disk in, there is a loud, clicking noise that doesn't stop. It still plays, but I'm just going to stick to playing Wii games on my Wii. I still can't believe I had to wait a month for my tri-wing screwdriver to be imported from Asia (thanks Amazon).

Great experience. The order was filled and delivered in 4 days. The instructions with pictures were excellent. Step 6 was the trickiest. Forget the tweezers. Use the spudger and a small flat head screwdriver and pry the connector off side to side. I took about 1 hour. It is very straightforward but not for the novice.

Good guide. I followed it but when I tried the DVD is not spinning. The DVD can be inserted and ejects nicely but it does not spin. I opened it up to step 22 again and checked the cables and connector, but it all looked fine. Anybody got a solution?

I read, after having problems with the first replacement drive, that it's pot luck with cheap DVD drives - whether the optics are really correctly aligned is anyone's guess. In my case, the drive occasionally read a Wii disk, but would usually cause an error on returning from a game to reading from the disk again. The signal that it failed to read a disk at all was a series of drive startup sounds, each followed by a loud click - I guess the optics failing to find something on the disk, retrying, and eventually returning to park position.

The only other thing I noticed is that the drive data cable can easily become bent when you reassemble the device. The kink in the data cable of our device did not prevent the second drive from working correctly. But I could imagine that a wire could be broken by such a kink.

Thanks - really great! Had to try twice, because the first replacement DVD drive was also bad. Only problem - I don't think that the front panel wires can be unplugged on my device. Eventually just left the front panel attached by it's wires. Parts and tools ordering over the web site is a real help as well.

Only went through step 18, as I needed to remove a daughter's bracelet that the son inserted into the drive - my step 19 was to take out the 5 screws holding the drive together - but I was reassembled and playing in about 20 min. A really well done and clear write up.

Caution: I tried repairing my Wii Classic with a drive from a Wii Family Edition. Now it won't play GameCube discs anymore. Besides buying another drive, does anyone else have any ideas on how to make this work? Or are the newer Wii Family Edition drives not able to play the smaller discs?

Great and very clear, you need to mark all of the screws, such as pots or as I did envelopes to hold the screws at each step. need to make sure you have the right screwdrivers - the philips ones seem very sensitive to using the correct size.

all u need to do is get the ifixit pro tech tool kit and the nintendo wii triwing screw driver on amazon thats it and its very easy to take apart the only difficult part is getting the ribbon and wire cable back onto the thing its easy to remove but hard to put back on

Good guide to fix DVD drive on Wii. Main trouble I had was to attach cable back to new DVD drive. Didn't realize that the second cable bacame longer and easier to use after hidden part was taken out of housing in last step to open.

Excellent guide. Very good visual to help user know hes’s in the right place. Putting it back together I had issues with the last two tri-wing / tiny screws and had to re-appropriate two of the longer tri-wing screws at key areas to hold the Wii together. It is solid, so I’m not worried. Thanks!